A 62-acre mixed-use development is planned next to the future Virginia Railway Express station in Spotsylvania County.

Landowners George Lester and Fitz Johnson plan to submit an application to county planning staff in the next few weeks for a rezoning on a piece of their land near the intersection of U.S. 17 and Crossroads Parkway.

Plans call for as much as 1.2 million square feet of commercial space including offices, retail and a hotel. The pair are also seeking to build 610 densely clustered residential units that could be apartments, townhouses or condominiums. The development is being called Crossroads Station.

Johnson, president of Johnson Realty Advisors in Fredericksburg, and Lester, CEO of The Lester Group in Martinsville, in 1999 bought about 800 acres to the north and south of U.S. 17. CSX Corp.'s railroad tracks run along the property.

Ten years after that purchase, Spotsylvania's Board of Supervisors voted to join the VRE and later picked Johnson and Lester's land as a logical place for the station. Train service is expected to start there in February 2013.

For the past two years, Johnson and Lester have been meeting with county officials, attorneys and transportation officials to design a development where people could work where they live or walk to the VRE. They hope to attract professional-oriented employers that would convince Northern Virginia residents to commute south on new train routes. There are already major employers nearby, including the Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, Germanna Community College and Fort A.P. Hill.

Plans for Crossroads Station call for a cluster of buildings with ground-level retail and offices above, a 180-room hotel and enough parking to accommodate VRE travelers. Lester and Johnson envision parking decks eventually being erected and a showpiece train station being built that could perhaps be an Amtrak stop.

But that's a long-range plan. Lester thinks the development will be built out over 20 to 40 years. The first step would be building the roads and parking needed for when VRE service starts in 2013. Subsequent development would be market-driven.

The land is currently zoned industrial, and the two men will ask for a rezoning to planned development commercial. They have hired Stafford County land-use attorney Clark Leming to shepherd the process through the county.

The first step is a community meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Oct. 12 at the Lee's Hill Community Center at 9901 Old Dominion Parkway. The input from that meeting could shape plans that are submitted to the county. The application will eventually come before Spotsylvania's Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

Bill Freehling: 540/374-5405
Email: bfreehling@freelancestar.com